With these tiny toys, Britain gets an exclusive Sonic item.
These are "Capsule Figures", so named because they are dispensed in a little round plastic thing like a gum ball after putting a coin into a machine. The USA doesn't have really sophisticated capsule machines much, but Japan does, and they're slowly creeping around the world dispensing things better than super-balls and gum!
Each figure comes with a piece of the base, and a little paper that shows the other figures. If you can collect them all, the base fits together and has the Sonic X Sonic face symbol on it. You can see an action figure from the MegaBots line in one of the photos, to tell just how small these are!

Want to buy these figures in 2009? You can get them for only Pound 1.99 each at www.sonicxstore.com , which is better than trying for random ones in a machine.